Chat with a field archaeologist changed how I see those 'perfect' digs on YouTube

I was grabbing coffee last Tuesday at a local diner here in St. Louis and ran into a guy who works on contract digs for highway projects. He told me most of the polished excavation videos you see online are staged - they often replant artifacts for the camera. He said his team finds maybe 2 decent objects in a 6 week survey, not the 50 they show per episode. Has anyone here worked on a real dig and noticed the same gap?

3 comments

3 Comments

eva_moore4d agoTop Commenter

Oh wow, that's wild. Did he say if the replanted stuff is even real artifacts from the site or do they just buy fake ones somewhere?

young.thomas4d ago

Probably just buys cheap replicas from some souvenir shop online (you know, the kind that comes with a "certificate of authenticity" printed on cardstock). I swear half the stuff in museums is just props they ordered from a catalog. Wouldn't surprise me if the "replanted" artifacts are just pieces of broken pottery from a Home Depot garden section.

charles8364d ago

@eva_moore that's just how everything is staged for clicks nowadays, not just archaeology.